Robert B. Parker's The Devil Wins

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Pretty sure of his timing, isn’t he?”

  “Watch.” Perkins tapped his wrist. “He’s got one of those fancy runner’s watches, shows the actual time and the time of the runner. Measures his heart rate, all stuff like that. He was checking his time when he noticed the body. He touched her neck. She was cold and there was no pulse. Then he called it in. He didn’t hear or see anyone or anything.”

  Shielding his eyes with his hand, Jesse looked at the sky over the water. Then he turned back to the Bluffs and to the jogger.

  “That time of the morning it would just be the gulls,” he said. “Tell Mr. Smythe he can go and that we’ll keep his name confidential, but that we might need to speak to him again.”

  “Okay, Jesse.”

  “And, Peter, when you’re done with Smythe, call Molly and get her down here.”

  As Peter walked away from him, Jesse kept looking up at the Bluffs.

  25

  Captain Healy and Molly Crane showed up at the crime scene at about the same time. Jesse had just finished giving Stu Cromwell his statement.

  Yes, the dead woman was Maxie Connolly, but that’s not official until the next of kin is notified and he identifies her. No, there were no obvious signs of foul play. Yes, her death would be investigated as if it were a homicide. Yes, you can quote me on that.

  It wasn’t much of a statement, but Cromwell would have it first. Though Cromwell knew Jesse wasn’t giving him anything he couldn’t have figured for himself, he had a statement he could attribute to an official source. That would make all the difference when it came to peddling the finished story.

  Jesse made sure Cromwell had left the area before he went over to talk to Healy and Molly.

  “This is a mess,” Healy said. “You think she killed herself?”

  Jesse shrugged. “Seems to be the question of the day.”

  Healy and Jesse stared at Molly.

  “What do you think, Molly?” Jesse asked.

  She shook her head and walked to the edge of the water.

  Healy was curious. “What’s with her?”

  “Catholic guilt. She didn’t like Maxie very much and didn’t do a good job of hiding it.”

  “What do you think, Jesse?”

  “When Maxie first walked into my office, I would never have figured her for this. But by the time she left, I would have changed my opinion. She took the official notification about her girl pretty hard.”

  “Guess even bad girls live in hope,” Healy said. “When you take the hope away, they crash like everybody else.”

  Jesse wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he said nothing.

  Healy pointed up. “You think she threw herself off the Bluffs?”

  Jesse shook his head. “I don’t like it.” There, he said it out loud. “I didn’t know the woman. Spent a half hour with her, but it seems too Wuthering Heights for me, her throwing herself off the Bluffs like that. And how did she get up there? Molly picked her up at the airport and we drove her back to her hotel. A fist full of pills and half a bottle of bourbon, okay, I’m buying. But this . . . I don’t like it.”

  “Yeah, you said that.”

  “Molly,” Jesse said, “come over here a minute.”

  “What is it, Jesse?”

  “Did Maxie mention renting a car to you?”

  Molly laughed, then caught herself. “She lost her license. She had a few DWIs down in Florida. Told me about five minutes after she got in the car, like she was proud of it.”

  “Go get the husband and bring him in to the station. Don’t tell him anything, but keep him there. Tell Suit to call the cab companies in town and see if we can’t find out if one of them brought her up here. Call Connor Cavanaugh at the hotel and tell him I’ll be by later this morning to look at his security tapes from last night and early this morning. And I want any record of phone calls in and out of their room last night.”

  “That it?” Molly asked.

  “For now. Hold on a second,” Jesse said, grabbing her arm as she started away. “Healy, can you give us a minute?”

  Healy turned and headed toward the body.

  “You okay?” Jesse asked, letting go of Molly’s arm.

  “Fine.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I will be.”

  “Better answer,” he said. “I bet you wished Maxie dead a few times when you were younger, huh?”

  Molly clenched her jaw.

  “I don’t know if Maxie suicided or if she was murdered, but there’s one thing I’m sure of.”

  “What’s that, Jesse?”

  “Your wishes had nothing to do with it. Now, go get the husband.”

  26

  Healy and Jesse circled around to the other side of the bluff and climbed the switchback stone steps up to the top. Healy was pretty winded when he finally made it, a full thirty seconds after Jesse. But both of their lungs burned as they sucked in gulps of frozen air. When Healy caught his breath, he turned to face the ocean.

  “Helluva a view from up here with the sun low in the sky,” Healy said. “The ocean, Stiles Island, the harbor, and the town. You can understand why all the rich families built their places on the Bluffs. Probably seemed like heaven.”

  “Just another name for Paradise. Come on.”

  They walked around to the spot on the bluff above where Maxie Connolly’s body had landed. They were careful as they approached, checking the ground for footprints, drag marks, signs of a struggle, but there wasn’t much to see except for some snapped branches on the winter-bare hedge that outlined the ledge of the bluff. This spot, the highest point of the Bluffs, had become a popular spot for visitors, as it offered the best view of Paradise and the rest of the area. On a very clear day, you could look south and see all the way to Boston. The town fathers hadn’t seen fit to put up a protective fence or guardrail, but had gotten a local nursery to plant some waist-high hedges along the perimeter of the bluff.

  “Looks like that spot there’s where she went over,” Healy said, pointing at the snapped branches. “No handbag or anything left behind.”

  Jesse nodded. “None by the body, either. Can we get a forensics team up here? Peter did the basics by the body, but I want a more thorough job done where she went over.”

  “They’re already on the way.”

  “That’s why they pay you the big money,” Jesse said.

  “Looking more and more like a suicide.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I know, Jesse. You don’t like it.”

  “I don’t, but I have to admit that it looks like suicide.”

  “Let’s see what the ME has to say.”

  Jesse shook his head. “I already spoke to her. She doesn’t think she’s going to find anything definitive to say it’s not suicide. A suicide note would be nice. Would make our jobs a lot easier.”

  “Got a pen and a piece of paper?” Healy asked.

  “Why, you thinking of jumping, too?”

  Healy just laughed.

  They moved about twenty yards to the right of where they assumed Maxie Connolly had gone over and stepped close to the edge of the adjoining bluff. When they looked down they could see the activity below. Maxie’s body was being bagged and the ME’s wagon had arrived to take her back to the morgue.

  “Mother and child reunion,” Healy said to himself.

  “What?” Jesse asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just that Maxie and her daughter will be in the same place together after all these years.”

  Jesse turned to look at his friend.

  “You feeling okay, Healy?”

  “Why?”

  “You’re being pretty philosophical this morning.”

  Healy grunted, then changed the subject.

  “I don’t think I could do it this way. You know, jump,” he s
aid.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You eat your gun, it’s over. There’s no time to want to take it back. Regret isn’t an option. You jump and there’s that fear and panic, even if it doesn’t last long. I wouldn’t want to die like that.”

  Jesse kept silent. After he’d discovered Jenn cheating on him and his drinking had gotten out of control, he’d had a few bad moments, moments when he’d considered eating his gun. But that was a long time ago and he had no time for bad memories at the moment. He had four bodies on his hands, three separate cases, and almost nothing to go on.

  “I’m heading back to Paradise,” Jesse said. “I’ve got to tell the husband. Call me if you find anything.”

  Healy gave Jesse a careless salute. “Aye, aye.”

  Now nearly back on the beach, Jesse looked behind him at the zigzagging stone steps he’d just come down. Maxie’s trip down had taken much less time.

  27

  Al Franzen didn’t look so much confused as defeated. Franzen sat on the other side of Jesse’s desk dressed in an expensive pair of gray wool slacks, a darker gray sweater, a black blazer, and black loafers. But the clothes hung off him, the way clothes often hung off gaunt old men. He had a hangdog expression on his tanned face. Yet as thin as he was, Franzen’s jowls and the skin of his neck had long ago succumbed to gravity. He wore his wispy gray hair in a bad comb-over and sat stoop-shouldered, with his bony hands in his lap. His hands were covered in brown splotches. But Jesse could see in Franzen’s age-faded brown eyes that he already knew Maxie was dead. It had been his experience that the next of kin often knew before they were told.

  “Mr. Franzen,” Jesse said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

  Al Franzen nodded as Jesse spoke the words he had repeated many times before. He had once tried to think of a different way to start these conversations. He had since given up trying. There was no good way to say it.

  “Maxie is dead,” Franzen said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “I knew it.”

  “How did you know it?” Jesse asked.

  “I’m old, Chief Stone, not stupid. Even at my age I can put two and two together to make four.”

  “I meant no disrespect.”

  But Franzen seemed not to hear. “I was a millionaire five times over by the time your mother changed your first diaper. I’m not the old fool Maxie thought I was. I knew she thought she was taking me for a ride, but, God help me, I loved her. She was the most exciting woman I had ever met, and just being around her . . .” Then he gathered himself. “I’m sorry, Chief Stone, forgive me.”

  “No need to apologize. But I have to ask you, how did you know Maxie was dead?”

  “She wasn’t in the room when I got up. Her pillows were cold and untouched. Her side of the sheets was smooth and cold. And then Officer Crane comes to my door and asks me to get dressed and come with her, but won’t tell me why. Like I said, it’s simple math.”

  Jesse asked, “Did she receive any calls or visitors last night? Did she make any calls?”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid I am not a well man and I take medication that makes me a very sound sleeper. A bomb could have gone off in the next room and I wouldn’t have heard it.”

  “But why did you assume she was dead, Mr. Franzen? She might just have gotten arrested or simply gone missing or run off.”

  Franzen shook his head. “No, I knew. I knew from the minute we got the call for her to come back to this town that Maxie wasn’t going to ever leave it again.”

  Jesse didn’t ask how or why he knew. He asked, “Do you think your wife was capable of suicide?”

  The old man looked at Jesse as if he had spoken to him in Japanese.

  “Suicide! Maxie? That’s crazy. You’re telling me she killed herself?”

  “A jogger found her on the beach at the bottom of an area of Paradise known as the Bluffs. It’s way too early on in the process to draw a conclusion, but there are no signs of a struggle. Preliminary indications point to suicide.”

  Maybe Al Franzen wasn’t defeated after all. He stood up and slammed a hand on Jesse’s desk. “Nonsense! Maxie was the most alive person I ever met. She wouldn’t.”

  But instead of feeling boosted by Franzen’s reaction, Jesse sagged. He remembered how Maxie had reacted the day before. The truth was, you couldn’t ever really know what was in someone else’s heart. It was difficult enough to know what was in your own.

  “She took the news about Ginny pretty hard,” Jesse said. “Yesterday, she fell apart sitting in that same chair when I told her she could collect Ginny’s remains.”

  Al Franzen slumped back in the chair. He had put up a fight, a good fight, but Jesse could see that the truth was dawning on Al as it was dawning on him. Maxie probably had killed herself.

  “When you said you knew Maxie was never going to leave Paradise again,” Jesse said, “what did you mean?”

  But Jesse had lost him. Al Franzen had retreated into himself, his eyes as unseeing as Maxie’s. Jesse waited a few minutes to let Franzen collect himself before explaining to the old man that he would have to identify his wife’s body.

  28

  Rod Wiethop lived in a crappy two-room apartment above a deli in the Swap. He wasn’t happy about being woken up by the pounding at his door and he was even less thrilled when he pulled back the door to see who had been doing the pounding. He sneered at the badge on Jesse Stone’s jacket.

  “Yeah, what?” he asked, a freshly lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

  “I’m Jesse Stone, chief of the Paradise PD. Can I come in, Mr. Wiethop?” Jesse pronounced the th in Wiethop’s name like the th in Thursday.

  “It’s Wiethop, like Wee-top,” he said, his voice all gravelly from smoke and sleep. “And no, you can’t come in. What’s this about?”

  Jesse didn’t react, not immediately.

  “You drive the six-to-six shift for Paradise Taxi?” he asked.

  “What of it?”

  Jesse gave Wiethop the cold stare and asked, “Is that yes or no in asshole-speak?”

  Wiethop shook his head. “Jeez, cops. It’s too early for this crap. Come on in.”

  Jesse stepped into what passed for the living room. It had all the charm of a holding cell. Jesse guessed Wiethop had probably spent a fair amount of time in holding cells.

  “What can I do you for, Chief?”

  “You had a fare last night. A blond woman wearing—”

  “A fake fur coat. Yeah, I’m not likely to forget her. She was a pretty hot piece of skirt for an old working girl. Something to drink, Chief?” Wiethop asked, holding up a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka.

  “No, thanks. Little early in the day for vodka.”

  “You mind if I do? It’s the only thing I can drink.”

  Jesse said, “Knock yourself out.”

  Wiethop filled a dirty coffee mug and took a gulp, blowing cigarette smoke out his nose as he did.

  “About this woman you’re not likely to forget.”

  “What about her?”

  “Where’d you pick her up and where’d you drop her off?”

  “Easy.” He took another gulp followed by a deep drag on the cigarette. “Paradise Plaza at about eleven-thirty and dropped her at the Gray Gull maybe five minutes later.”

  Jesse was already shaking his head before Wiethop was halfway done with his answer.

  “Try again.”

  “Check my trip sheet if you don’t believe me,” Wiethop said, lighting another cigarette with the one he was still smoking. Jesse had already rattled him.

  “Did that. Checked your trip sheet. Been to the Gray Gull. You’re full of it.”

  Jesse could see the wheels turning in the cabbie’s head. Wiethop poured himself some more vodka, took all of it at once, and winced.

  “Okay, all right.�
�� He crushed the second cigarette out without even taking a hit. “The old babe gave me fifty bucks on the arm if I said I took her to the Gull.”

  “That’s a start. Where’d you really take her?”

  “The Bluffs, over by the old Salter place. I told her she could wait in the car until her trick showed up. She didn’t like that too well. Threw the fifty and a ten at me and told me to shove it.”

  “You thought she was a hooker?”

  “C’mon, Chief. Made sense, right? Getting picked up at a hotel and then asking to get driven up to some deserted place on the Bluffs. Shit, you knew she was gonna get in somebody’s car after that. She’s wearing that big fake fur and she was all made up and smelled like a million bucks’ worth of perfume, too.”

  “That was no fake fur, Wiethop, and she was no hooker.”

  “You’re kidding me.” He shrugged. “I didn’t figure that. But I’m telling you she was meeting somebody. I’d stake my ass on it. She could hardly sit still in her seat. I thought she was going to make a big score.”

  “You’re sure you left her by the Salter place and not further up the Bluffs?”

  Wiethop held his hands out at Jesse. “Why would I lie to you about something as stupid as that?”

  “All right. Thanks.” Jesse turned to go.

  “Listen, Chief, you ain’t gonna tell my boss about—”

  “About the extra fifty and lying on your trip sheet? Not unless I find out you were lying to me. I find that out and it won’t be your boss you’ll have to worry about answering to.”

  “I wasn’t lying to you. I swear.”

  Jesse wasn’t sure he believed him.

  29

  Connor Cavanaugh was an old football buddy of Suit’s. He was head of security at the Paradise Plaza, the one full-service hotel in Paradise. The rest of the accommodations in town were a patchwork quilt of quaint inns and fussy Victorians converted into B-and-Bs by overwrought Bostonians or New Yorkers with fantasies of simpler lives. Winter was the dead zone for any place with vacant rooms in Paradise. There was the regatta in summer, the changing foliage in autumn, and the antiques sales in spring to lure outsiders to town. Usually, there was no equivalent winter magnet to draw people to Paradise, but this year there was murder.